The U.S. Government uses names decided by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, a well-named board. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names' standard name for that body of water is the Sea of Japan.

Hey Koreans, if you remove Japan from the map, what happens? That's right, your "East Sea" would no longer exist and would simply be an indistinguishable part of the Pacific Ocean. Get a clue from your Chinese and Russian neighbors (and just about every other country in the world) who both call it the Sea of Japan.

Oh dear god, not this again

In a hundred years all of Asia will be called China, and the new Chinese overlords will call it what they wish...

"Virginia is home to many Korean-Americans."

Indeed it is. Some parts of the state in the north (near Washington, DC) might as well be sovereign territory of South Korea given how large the Korean immigrant communities are in that area. Overall it's been a good thing economically for the state, given the education levels and overall work ethic of Korean immigrants, and most Virginians would agree. Remarkable development for an ex-Confederate US state that was basically a white supremacist, apartheid-style dictatorship until just a half-century ago.

But it is becoming a problem for the Japanese. Korean-American constituents are exerting pressure on state lawmakers throughout the USA to codify their often vitriolic anti-Japanese views. This is exactly what happened a few years ago when a Congressman from California (a Japanese-American named Mike Honda, no less) supported passage of a bill by the US House of Representatives that asked for an official apology from Japan over the "comfort women" issue. Care to guess the ethnic composition of Mike Honda's electoral district?

The situation Japan faces vis-a-vis large Korean immigrant groups in the USA is similar in some ways to what Britain confronted vis-a-vis large Irish immigrant communities in the USA a century ago. Those Irish-Americans wanted to isolate and hurt Britain diplomatically and truly hated the place, to the point where the elected mayor of Chicago vowed to punch the King of England in the nose if he ever visited the Windy City.

Hey, @wipeout, you forgot the new Salish Sea - which is certainly not a sea! But what the heck, we're politically correct, here in LaLaLand.

Remarkable development for an ex-Confederate US state that was basically a white supremacist, apartheid-style dictatorship until just a half-century ago.

You don't need to use hyperbole to make a point, MASSWIPE. Apartheid it may have been, but a dictatorship it was not. Try to actually look up the definition of a dictatorship.

Trawling for the Korean-American vote in Virginia? Bit desperate...

"Trawling for the Korean-American vote in Virginia? Bit desperate..."

Well, if by desperate you mean "wishing to get re-elected and keep one's job" then so be it. This is ethnic politics in America for better or for worse, and it's been that way for more than a century. Immigrants move in, gain citizenship and the right to vote, and begin pressuring lawmakers. There are tens of thousands of Korean-Americans now residing in areas of northern Virginia. Getting elected to the state assembly from a district located in the north often means you absolutely have to carry the support of the Korean immigrant community.